 The October 6, 2020 Indiepix Films DVD release of the 2019 documentary "The Harvest" reaps plenty of food for thought as to Eastern European country Georgia both being a largely rural country with a history and a present of faulty infrastructure and a center of bitcoin manufacturing.
The intertitles that open this beautifully shot film explain that Georgia has moved on from a history of daily power failures to becoming a leader of "farms" that consist of computers that solve mathematical algorithms for seemingly not much fun but for great profit in the form of bitcoins. This form of contrast is a common theme that the contrasting images of simple rural living are contrasted with operations great and small that produce the titular bounty. One of the more striking images is of the locals hanging out in a pasture that a mini-tower of satellite dishes dominates. These folks are discussing their tech. work. We also see a drone travel across this largely unspoiled landscape. The following excerpt from the Indiepix press release does an excellent job providing the big picture this time. In the ancient countryside, Georgia is softly making its way into the 21st century as the second largest exporter of bitcoins. In the region of Kakheti, just east of the capital city of Tbilisi, some 15% of the world's cryptocurrency is mined, or "harvested" in a country that not long ago suffered daily power outages. And while bees still buzz in the flowery fields of the Gombori Pass, a louder buzzing is heard from the space-age machines that crackle and whir from their neon lit hives housed in empty villas, ushering in a new and thriving form of capitalism. [Director Misho] Antadze also pulls back the curtain on the computer banks, in which so many of the rapid-fire, complex algorithms are solved. A hitherto hidden industry is fully visualized, with the motherboards, cooling fans and luminescent cabling of these noisy hives of virtual activity getting their big screen debut. Once only home to vines and fruit, the rural Kakheti wine region sees the boundary between the natural and the virtual virtually eradicated. Cows placidly graze alongside satellite dishes in a bizarrely bucolic lunar-like landscape and dairy farms and server farms coexist. And as ruminations both droll and profound emerge among the intersections of pastoral rhythms and algorithms, fluid camerawork deftly dices the old and the new in long takes that picture placid protagonists working on the countryside or on computers, unaware that the landscape is changing - both literally and figuratively. The bottom line regarding all this is the long-standing wisdom to never underestimate anyone without full knowledge of the relevant facts.
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